Derrida's Secret: Perjury, Testimony, Oath
Charles Barbour
Abstract
Against the backdrop of a series of recent political events (the Snowden Affair, the Manning Affair, Wikileaks, Clinton’s private email account, and so forth), this book argues that secrecy is a condition, rather than a negation, of the social bond – that we can only relate to one another insofar as, at the same moment, we separate from one another as well. It pursues this argument via a close consideration of Derrida’s thought, and especially his discussion of the concepts of perjury, testimony, and oath in his later work. It shows that, for Derrida, precisely because the other, or some cruci ... More
Against the backdrop of a series of recent political events (the Snowden Affair, the Manning Affair, Wikileaks, Clinton’s private email account, and so forth), this book argues that secrecy is a condition, rather than a negation, of the social bond – that we can only relate to one another insofar as, at the same moment, we separate from one another as well. It pursues this argument via a close consideration of Derrida’s thought, and especially his discussion of the concepts of perjury, testimony, and oath in his later work. It shows that, for Derrida, precisely because the other, or some crucial aspect of the other, remains absolutely other (unknown, opaque, a secret), every interaction presupposes an oath to say what one means and believe what the other says. Put differently, and paradoxically, our capacity for deception that compels us to trust or have faith in one another. This is an aspect of Derrida’s work that is often confused with a ‘religious’ or ‘theological turn’ in his later writings.
Keywords:
Secret,
Lie,
Derrida,
Perjury,
Testimony,
Oath,
Consciousness,
Politics
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2017 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781474424998 |
| Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: January 2018 |
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9781474424998.001.0001 |
